Whittlesey finds that an artist’s life is the berries

Blueberry bushes produce great pie fillings and flavorful compote for blintzes and great additions to pancake batter.

Ellen Chahey

PLENTY OF ROOM FOR MUSHROOMS – Dartmouth’s Slocum’s River Reserve is showcasing West Barnstable artist Steve Whittlesey’s oak and pine mushrooms through April.

Turning oak and pine into “mushrooms” and more

Blueberry bushes produce great pie fillings and flavorful compote for blintzes and great additions to pancake batter. But a West Barnstable artist looked at his stand of blueberry bushes and thought furniture.

Steve Whittlesey and his wife were both longtime summer residents of the Cape as youngsters and were “casting about” for a place to live when they married and began to raise a family. They bought a property “carved out” from the West Barnstable brickworks area, he said, on a plot that was planned as a blueberry farm.

The couple did operate a pick-your-own operation for a while, then let it go, and now are bringing back 1,200 highbush blueberry shrubs, he said.

But it was the wood that caught the imagination of Whittlesey, who has a master of fine arts degree from Columbia University and was a professor in the artisanry department of the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth. “It is like cherry or other fruitwood,” he said of the shrub.

In an artist’s statement on his website, Whittlesey explains the attraction: “Making work out of implausible, almost worthless salvage wood, and stretching the limits of structure and function is at the center of my work – it is how I try to answer questions about the value and importance of objects I live with. My pieces move, sway and tremble, and are not very accommodating – they demand respect for their unusual structures and tender connections.”

Photos on the website include works that Whittlesey has made from materials that he identifies as “salvage: pine, mahogany, boat planking, a lobster pot, and even “twelve solitary confinement doors from [an] old prison.” Ladders, stones, a wheel, and an “old scrub brush” make appearances, too.

At the moment, Whittlesey is exhibiting oak and pine sculptures of “huge mushrooms” at the Slocum’s River Reserve in Dartmouth, a property of the Trustees of Reservations and the Dartmouth Natural Resources Trust. The sculptures remain in place through April.

Why mushrooms? “I’m trying to respond to the land, and [the mushrooms] are a metaphor for how best to relate to nature. They’re minimally invasive, “ he said.

Whittlesey got interested in furniture through an early partnership with Rick Kiusalas of West Barnstable Tables. As they worked together making tables from salvaged wood, Whittlesey realized that he was more interested in “the sculptural” aspects of what he was doing and wanted to market his creations through art galleries. “They do a very classy job,” he said of the table company.

Recently, Whittlesey won a $500 “finalist award in crafts from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Another town resident, Steven J. Martin of Marstons Mills, won a similar $500 grant from the Council for dramatic writing. They are two of 15 state residents who received the grants.

“You don’t get rich” in the arts, Whittlesey said, but there’s a outlet for “talent, creativity, and energy, but you’re also in business, and it’s great being your own boss and expressing your own ideas.”

He said that his work has been selling well enough that “sometimes I can close the door and do what I want to do.” In the mid-1960s, he won a Fulbright grant that he spent in Spain.

He observed about his work, “You’re sort of a long-distance runner – it’s not for everybody.” But he liked teaching at UMass Dartmouth, which, he said, “expects teachers to work in the field they teach. I have no complaints at all” about his career there where he taught not only art itself but “how to market yourself as an artist.”

What of his work does Whittlesey have in his own home?

There’s a dining table and some cabinets, he said, and some works “that didn’t sell,” and some that he made “expressly for the family.”

And what about the blueberries? “Oh, the whole familiy likes blueberries,” he said of his wife, a therapist, and their daughters and son who have gone on to writing, architecture, and jewelry design. ”We always have some blueberries in the freezer.”

The artist’s website is stevewhittlesey.com. For more about the Slocum’s River Reserve project, go to http://dnrt.org/calendar/

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